Solution for Asus Zenbook UX32VD fan issue

I love my Asus Zenbook UX32VD because of its nice design, dedicated graphic card, full HD screen and upgradeable RAM and HDD. I have upgraded my UX32VD with additional RAM so it has 10GB of RAM, replace its HDD with a Samsung 830 SSD and do a fresh install of Windows 8.

Everything went perfect and smooth, Windows 8 installed fresh without problem. It took me several hours to figure out all drivers needed to be installed so there is no ‘unknown’ devices on Control Panel device management without the need of installing all Asus software crap.

Now, as many UX32VD owners I also had a problem with the fan goes “on off, on off” every 2 seconds or so. The fans goes on when the processor/GPU temperature reach on 50 celsius and goes off when the temperature reach around 45 celsius which is a very short range. 50 celsius is easily reached when you browse a website, then the fans kicks in and when your browser finished loading the page, the fans goes off.

I don’t mind to have a “swoooshh” continuous fan noise, but my problem is that the fans of UX32VD goes on (ramp up its speed from off state to around 20% speed) for 2 seconds and then turn off. What make it more annoying is that usually the processor fan goes on first, then the GPU fan goes on and then processor fan goes off continued with GPU fan goes off (UX32VD have 2 fans, one for its processor and one for its dedicated GPU).

I noticed that the fan one on the left (I assume it’s GPU fan) is also generating “wuuung” noise when it goes on and when it goes down which is the sound that annoy me even more.

Solution that I tried

From reading forums some people suggest to uninstall Intel DPTF (Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework), upgrade BIOS and reinstall Power4Gear, I have tried these but it doesn’t fix the “on off, on off” fan problem.

Another tip from forum member that I have tried was installing NoteBookFanControl software. NBFC does able to detect and control fan speed, unfortunately it seems to only have full control for the processor fan. The GPU fan, although it seems to follow the max speed I set on NBFC it still tries to go “on, off, on, off” every 2 seconds as I can slightly hear its “wuuung” noise. It’s something like the BIOS tried to turn on the fan but then NBFC intercept to quickly turn it off. I concluded that NBFC is not the solution that I like.

Solution that worked for me

Desperate that all possible solutions doesn’t seems to work for me and Asus technical support even answer that “they didn’t know there is such problem with the fan” and suggest to just RMA my ultrabook, I just want to ignore the noise and put on my noise cancelling headphone Bose Quiet Comfort 15 and stop wasting time trying to find a fix.

But then I got an idea, what if I set the dedicated GPU to work harder? so it produce more heat, so the fan will run a little longer hence it doesn’t make that short repetitive on, off annoyance? And that is what I did.

On NVidia Control Panel software, go to “3D Settings > Manage 3D settings”. On the right panel you’ll see “Global Settings” tab, there you’ll have an option of “Prefered graphics processor”, on the dropdown menu select “High-performance NVIDIA processor”. Also make sure on “Program Settings” tab that your browsers use Nvidia processor.

With this settings now the left fan (GPU fan) goes on longer than before, around 15 seconds and when the GPU is cooler it will turn off and stay off for a while until it reach the heat limit to turn on again. So the short bursts “on, off” fan problem seems to be fixed for me :) I also noticed that after I set this settings, the processor fan is always on with around 14% speed (which is fine for me).

Hi Markus. My ux32vd had the noisy fan syndrome as well. I went a bit further because your “trick” didn’t work for my laptop. I took it open and changed the thermal compound to Cool laboratorys liguid pro. Its liquid silver and works wonders on your cooling. As usual the original thermal paste was rubish. I got amazing results –> idle temps from 50 C to 42 C!!! If you are not afraid of voiding your warranty this does the trick. Thanks for the info Markus and if this helps some one you are welcome. :)

Hello, Thanks for the insight. I solved the problem slightly differently. I did try the things suggested here, but also decided to change the thermal paste. I was able to move the warranty sticker without damaging it. In the process I noticed one of the fans was sticking up a little, so I was about to attempt to spin it and I heard a little snap. Seems that the fan was misaligned and the little push popped it back into place. This may be a common issue, and the cause of the other fan working overtime since both fans blow on the same heatsink. I made sure to turn the laptop on before replacing the cover just to make sure the fan was working, and it came right back on. Now my ux32vd is silent again. Hope this helps others that havent had luck with the other fixes!

Thanks for the tip! It worked for me. But I was able to fix the issue and revert the Nvidia settings by letting the laptop overheat a bit. I let some CPU hungry application running and let the laptop in its slipcover for about half an hour (sleep mode disabled). It may have help the thermal compound re-spread or something.

After two years of use with reasonably quiet fans my UX32A suddenly became unusable with the fans continually turning full on and then off again. I checked all the usual software recommendations to no avail and since the problem still existed when booted into the BIOS screen I suspected a hardware problem. I removed the processor heat sink to find that the original thermal compound had dried out and become brittle. After removing all of the original compound and applying some new heat sink compound and reassembling the problem was completely solved. Quiet again!

My Zenbook UX32L had some fan issues too. Both fans were running constantly. First of all I cleaned them by removing the backcover and using compressed air. But the problem still existed. So I checked the CPU usage. Though I wasn’t running any relevant programm it was about 40 %. 30 % was caused by wlanext.exe. That seemed to be abnormal. In the end I ran adwcleaner which found 3Dprintservice.exe. After removing it the fans acted normal again. So my advice is to search for any adware first.